Catholic Miracle Beliefs Do Harm
A miracle is supernatural.
When a miracle is reported and even judged plausible or probably true, natural
causes cannot be eliminated. Even believers have to admit the possibility of
being wrong.
Suppose you see a statue bleed miraculously. Maybe you are insane and the statue
is not bleeding.
Maybe those who eliminate natural causes are incompetent or lying. Maybe they
are miraculously misled to think a miracle happened.
Religion says that belief and faith are related but are not the same thing. You
need belief to have faith. The dispute between believers in miracles and
unbelievers and those who do not decide one way or the other is down to the
quality of the evidence. Keep your focus on evidence.
It is important for unbelievers and sceptics not to take lip or abuse from
believers in miracles. Tell them firmly that nobody has the right to abuse over
a belief or to inflict their over-attachment to a belief on others.
RELIGION LIES ABOUT HAVING MIRACLE EVIDENCE FOR ITS CLAIMS
Catholics say they have evidence for God and Jesus for they have done miracles
to show their love and presence. They do not have evidence at all. They follow
people who thought or believed miracles happen. That is not the same as
believing in the evidence.
It is no better than believing a person who says they have evidence for who Jack
the Ripper was but who does not give you the evidence.
To affirm the supernatural and the magical is to claim the right to hurt others,
directly or indirectly, with your belief. For example, take the bitter divisions
over the apparitions of Medjugorje. If the apparition claim was never made, none
of that trouble would have happened. If people don't believe in miracles, there
are no disputes and no fighting or people being led astray over them.
To affirm that miracles or magic happens, is to tell others that you have the
right to disregard the laws of nature. For example, you can deny that dead men
stay dead if man can rise from the dead. If you have the right, you must have
adequate evidence. If miracles were signs they would happen at a scheduled time
in front of respected scientists. You cannot have evidence that a miracle is
going to happen. You can only gather evidence after it happens. The strongest
evidence is gleaned during the event. After the event it gets weak. And the
weaker the evidence gets the more you depend on the word of authority. And the
more you depend on human thinking the more you are saying you will let people or
religion tell you what to think about God.
Miracles are never verified to the standard that a crime would be verified by
the police. That nobody wants that level of checking out to be done is a warning
bell.
Miracle beliefs are seen as harmless by many. But the attitude underlying this
certainly is not harmless. The attitude is, "Miracles do happen." The person who
encourages friends to listen to Christian healers who tell them to eschew all
medicine and medical care has the same attitude as the person who says miracles
encourage a respectful attitude towards medical care. Both have a risky
attitude. Their attitude is essentially dangerous. It is only luck that the
latter person does not endorse dangerous religious practices. Bad attitudes are
still bad when they do not result in harm. The risk of harm is still there and
they are bad for that reason.
CONCLUSION
Catholicism is based on the miraculous and therefore it is a dangerous religion.
